


Five Times Crowley Hated the 14th Century, and One Time He Almost Sort Of Didn’t

by Chromat1cs



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Historical, M/M, Pre-Canon, and BARELY hitting lovers by the end, bless Pratchett and Gaiman for the food, can I call it pining if Crowley doesn't know he's pining, except they're sort of-ish at friends when it starts, my contribution to the slowest slow burn ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 04:43:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19221832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: The 1300s are garbage. Crowley would prefer to just speed ahead to what inevitably comes next after all this plague-ery (not his idea) and Hundred Years’ War-ing (only a bit his idea), but, as a certain angel likes to say, one can’t just skip all the ineffable steps to get there. So he’ll wait. And stew. And grouse a lot.Heaven, it really is hellish here on the ground sometimes.





	Five Times Crowley Hated the 14th Century, and One Time He Almost Sort Of Didn’t

**Author's Note:**

> The disastrous combination of medieval history nerd, anointed Catholic, and huge Good Omens fan leapt out for this one, pals. I read the book ages ago and finished the miniseries last night, and seeing David Tennant growl “I hated the 14th century” lit my imagination up like a goddamn Roman candle. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this one, thanks so much for stopping by!

**_1309  
_ ** _ Avignon, France. An empty plot of land, currently being surveyed by stonemasons. _

Grass crunches faintly under Crowley’s feet, his walk as close to a run as he can get it without actually looking as though he gives a shit. French patters around him in a cacophany, liquidy birdspeak,  _ Bless it all,  _ Crowley so much more prefers Italian. That’s the crux of this whole thing at a glance, really. 

The plot of land Aziraphale had told Crowley to find in his letter peeks out around the next corner Crowley turns, and he sees Aziraphale standing waiting there—or at least what Crowley assumes is Aziraphale, all neatened clothing and as near one can get to white in a climate like this, the south of France before soap has really caught on,  _ More like south of arse— _ “Hi.”

Aziraphale turns to face Crowley, eyebrows up as though Crowley could ever really startle him after several hundred years of meeting up like this. Perhaps it’s just the particular malice Crowley can feel in the slight curl of his top lips as snarls his greeting. Aziraphale looks bothered, and so Crowley cools his heels just a bit. He flails a hand at the empty land. “Is this one your fault?”

“ _ Hello, Aziraphale, good to see you too,” _ Aziraphale says through slightly gritted teeth, visibly keeping from rolling his eyes.  _ “My _ fault. The nerve. No, I had assumed this one was from  _ your _ end.”

Crowley holds in a dirty scoff. Half the papacy had, with a suddenness that he could only assume was Heaven sticking its nose into things, decided to delegitimize Rome and up and move the papal seat to Avignon. France is decidedly harder to corrupt than Rome, what with the lack of bad luck very carefully sewn into Romulus and his ilk by yours truly, and so Crowley has tried very hard not to take the change personally. “We were having a good go of it in Rome, what with all the dissent and the bickering,” he spits. “And now they decide to yank it all down to France. Bonjour,  _ fuquers!” _

Aziraphale tightens his jaw. “That isn’t how you say that word in French.”

“Yeah, well, hate this place regardless.” Crowley crosses his arms and glares at the stonemasons running about like busy ants with surveying equipment. “What are they building?”

Pinching his mouth together, that look Crowley has learned says  _ I’m Anticipating Your Reaction, _ Aziraphale folds his hands into his sleeves. “The Papal palace.”

Crowley hisses to himself. “And the fucking Vatican wasn’t enough?”

“Calm yourself, Crowley, it’s just a cathedral.”

“As if those are any better, frescoes and gilt and  _ saints _ everywhere.” Crowley broods for a moment to himself, scowling at the construction sight, before looking sideways at Aziraphale. “This doesn’t mean we’re backing off, you know.”

“From what, building churches?”

“The papacy. Still going to meddle, still going to tempt, still going to muck up the dogma, except now we have to do it  _ twice.” _ Crowley holds up two fingers in a very rude vee in Aziraphale’s direction. To Aziraphale’s credit, he doesn’t look as though it phases him very badly.

“You think  _ you’ve _ been inconvenienced,” Aziraphale mutters, looking as though somebody has doodled in the margins of his favorite bible illumination, “just wait until I have to fill out all the paperwork that comes with keeping two popes on the same page.”

Crowley’s stomach drops and he groans, tipping his face up to the sky. “I didn’t even  _ think _ of the paperwork.” He’s awful with a quill and still has trouble telling the esses from the effs half the time.

Fretting with the hem of one sleeve, Aziraphale looks just a bit sympathetic. “Well, other than the Catholics deciding to be difficult again, anything else particularly new on your end?”

“A few possessions, a haunting, some portentous storms in the Adriatic, you know how it goes,” Crowley grumbles. He has a very deep-seated feeling that if this is how the 14th century is starting out, he isn’t going to like the rest of it one bit. 

“Shall we find a bite to eat then?”

Crowley looks up at Aziraphale with a confused frown. Aziraphale has been doing this lately, asking Crowley to come break bread with him,  _ voluntarily. _ Despite the instinct in Crowley’s gut telling him to go,  _ go,  _ he shakes his head. 

“Not today, busy. I’ll see you again in six months then, and I’ll thank you not to meet in France for at least another century, yeah?” 

Aziraphale looks slightly defeated, and Crowley tries to find an iota of pride because of that. He fails. 

“Right. Six months. Farewell then, Crowley.”

Crowley turns and ignores the compulsion to crack a mild sort of joke to make Aziraphale quit frowning. He walks back toward the beach and raises one hand. “Ta.”

—

**_1346  
_ ** _ Northeastern France, the Battle of Crécy. A hilly warzone, all in chaos. _

Crowley dodges the broad stroke of a sword and stabs his own blade down into the mud. He’s heaving breath, exhausted, furious, and more than a little inconvenienced.  _ “Aziraphale!” _

The din of the battle rages, a roar in his ears, and Crowley casts about for some evidence of the angel. He’s lucky nobody can see him, but he’ll be blessed if he gets discorporated in the middle of some petty fucking human disagreement by an errant stab.  _ “AZIRAPHALE!” _

Something claps down on Crowley’s left shoulder, and after the split-second triage of deciding it isn’t somebody hacking off his arm by accident Crowley whirls to see a white-faced Aziraphale in pearl-colored English raiment. Crowley fumes, relief and fury clashing mightily behind his teeth. “Satan singing, Aziraphale, I told you  _ no more France.” _

“I didn’t want to be here, Crowley, the king wasn’t even supposed to stop here! The Flemings were supposed to help, but then th—”

“I don’t care who did what!” Crowley yells, ducking the sharp elbow of a mercenary tearing past in a dead run. “But we’re both here now, aren’t we? So let’s  _ talk.” _

Aziraphale seems to shrink slightly under Crowley’s glare, his eyes darting around the battlefield as the gruff chorus of men doing murderous things thunders into the sky around them. “Your side called off the siege at Bethune, didn’t they?”

“What?”

“The  _ siege,” _ Aziraphale clarifies in a louder shout, his diction punchingly crisp above the metallic clatter of battle, “The Flemings were supposed to cross the Somme and be here to aid the English but they gave  _ up! _ That was  _ your side, _ wasn’t it?”

The telltale whistle of a javelin approaches with quick ferocity, and before Crowley knows it he’s got Aziraphale by the arm and pulls him sharply to the side out of the spear’s way. The weapon buries itself with a sickening squelch into the back of a French soldier, a cry of victory goes up from a hoarse Englishman somewhere behind them, and Crowley glares into the wide, shocked blue of Aziraphale’s eyes. “I don’t know who’s doing what in this mess,” Crowley shouts, honesty bright and carbuncled on his tongue, “but all I know is that we’re both getting a blessed lot of souls in our halls after this. What does the  _ almighty _ say about that then?”

Aziraphale looks as though he might bite back, but his face hardens and he yanks his arm back to himself out of Crowley’s gauntleted grip. “I don’t presume to know what the Almighty is doing with how humanity moves itself about, but I do know that duplicity is hardly heavenly.”

“What, you think I bungled someone’s march?” Crowley stands up sharply, his helmet dinging off of someone’s pommel as he winces. A cluster of horses whinnies and screams somewhere on the other end of the battlefield. “That’s juvenile, Aziraphale, I would meddle with equipment and you know it!”

Aziraphale struggles to stand up again in the mud, and Crowley helps hoist him to his feet without really thinking about it. Aziraphale is still frowning. “I know. I’m sorry. Humanity is really flying off its own handle these days, isn’t it?”

“Not my place to critique,” Crowley cries. His voice is starting to go, he hates yelling when it isn’t for the purpose of instilling mortal fear in something. “But yeah, you might be right.”

“Unfortunate,” Aziraphale replies with something that almost looks like agreement. “On that note, have you—”

A very thick and angry punching sound erupts from just in front of Crowley, and it takes a shuddering moment of dissociative confusion before Crowley realizes Aziraphale’s face has contorted into something in the realm of agony. Crowley’s insides go very cold. “Aziraphale?”

“It—I—oh, tosh,” Aziraphale groans with some effort. He looks down at his chest as Crowley mirrors him, to where the bright fletching of an arrow sticks out from his chest. The pointed end is, undoubtedly, pinned out from his back. Aziraphale begins to shimmer with the warping flexion of discorporation, and Crowley immediately reaches out to grip the angel by his forearm again.

“Aziraphale,  _ stay,” _ he pleads, incongruent, knowing the dark and awkward fug of discorporation and suddenly suffuse with sympathy to not let Aziraphale wallow through it on his own. “It’s alright, only an arrow.”

“It’s through my heart, Crowley.” Aziraphale looks, for some reason, apologetic and slightly curious at once as he cocks his head to the side. “It’s alright. Was that a  _ longbow? _ ”

“No,  _ no,  _ it will take you years to come back, Aziraphale, don’t—”

“Don’t worry, we won’t meet in France next time.”

With that, Aziraphale bursts noiselessly into a dazzle of pale sparkles. Crowley hisses and flinches backward, the holiness of it burning his eyes, while his heart wrenches painfully in his chest to leave him empty in the middle of screaming melee.

Crowley sets his teeth. He turns on his heel toward the woods at the edge of hillside, bile in his throat, and hates France and the last nine years in particular to the very core of his marrow.

—

**_1351  
_ ** _ London, England. The bank of the river Thames, Tuesday, just before supper. _

Dead, dead, dead.

Fuck. Even the water looks dead.

Crowley stares at a piece of rubbish, perhaps a scrap of cloth or perhaps a piece of wood or bark or whatever else floats anymore, as it meanders past on a current that’s hardly there, thick like black blood and deeper than sin.

Crowley should  _ like  _ the fact that there’s sin involved, and yet.

“Glad to see you’re still around then.”

Aziraphale approaches from the left side of the path and Crowley barely glances up at him. He feels the frown carved into his face, should love the malaise sitting heavily overtop of the entire city, country,  _ world _ —Crowley sighs. “Can’t get sick, I’ve realized.”

The scrunch of Aziraphale lowering himself carefully into a sit beside Crowley on the riverbank tugs at Crowley’s attention, and he’s glad to find that something very akin to comfort prods at his guts. “A belated realization, isn’t it?” Aziraphale says airily. The flippance he clearly means to put in his voice falls miserably short of presence to Crowley’s ear. “We’ve seen through several plagues, I’d count by now.”

Crowley hisses to himself, low and sorrowful. “None like this.”

The pause between them is bulky and ugly as unrefined iron. “No,” Aziraphale murmurs in assent, “none quite like this.”

They’re quiet for a moment, through which Crowley holds fast and secretly to the relief of Aziraphale here beside him after long and frustrating bouts of hoping—look at him, a demon,  _ hoping _ —for some end to the black crust of suffering and illness that had gripped humanity for the past seven years. Each six-month mark had been a pain in Crowley’s side, a war of fury and need so deep in his bones that he hardly even thought to dig up its origin, until the brief dittany of Aziraphale showing up, more and more haggard as the Plague barreled onward without slowing, before whisking off to Satan knows where again until Crowley could distract himself for one short conversation another six months later. If Crowley cares to really dwell on it, the last seven years have been some of the worst yet.

He wants, Crowley finds with an uncomfortable pulling in his chest, to reach out and hold Aziraphale’s hand. He pushes away the thought by pinching at the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut as he vents a low, heavy sigh. “How many millions have you all got new then?”

“New as in the past year, or new as in back when this whole mess started?”

Crowley tosses out a messy shrug. “Whenever.”

“Near one-hundred-million in total, by the last count.” Aziraphale’s voice shakes ever so slightly. Emotion digs into Crowley like serrated claws.

“Us too,” he croaks.

Aziraphale sighs. The stink of the river mingles with the stink of the world, the stink of the state of things, the stink of fucking  _ existing, _ and Crowley is very acutely loathe to give a shit about anything for the moment. “You’d think,” Crowley says, his voice poisonous with humorless sarcasm, “I’d enjoy all this disaster.”

“Oh, Crowley.” Aziraphale shifts to face him, and Crowley can’t look to meet the stare that tone of voice betrays—he can’t, because if he does he’ll probably cry, and a demon crying means tears of blood and Crowley knows neither of them really needs that sort of nonsense right now. He keeps staring at the water as Aziraphale takes a tremulous little breath and continues; “You have far better taste than a plague, even I know that.”

The incongruity of it surprises Crowley, humor in the aftermath of catastrophe, and he can’t help the desperate little burble of laughter that rattles up from his depths. “You really mean it?”

“I’ve always assumed you’re more of an Unholy Raging Fire and Brimstone type, am I correct?” Aziraphale prods him with a gentle elbow, and Crowley appreciates it more than a little. He turns then to face Aziraphale, and the calm he finds there in the angel’s expression is more healing than any miracle he can scrape to thing of.

“Yeah,” he says softly, “I think so.”

—

**_1363  
_ ** _ Lake Poyang, near Nanchang, China. Early evening, amid the waves. _

Belowdecks of a ship locked in naval battle, Crowley decides, is the closest to actually being in hell that he’s found on earth so far. 

The ship pitches sharply as a muffled tremor of violence rumbles somewhere in the ocean outside, and Crowley reaches out and scrabbles against the wall to keep his footing as best he can. The lone lantern swinging madly from the low ceiling casts horrific black shadows over the wall, even more dizzying than the roll of the waves outside, and the clatter of combat seems as though it’s everywhere at once. Aziraphale had arranged for them to meet near the lake before either of them had gotten wind of exactly  _ how _ precipitous the tension between the Yuan dynasty and the White Lotus had become of late and now, thrown in among the thick of it, it was far past being able to call a rain check. 

“Crowley!”

Crowley whirls to see Aziraphale leaning heavily on the hull at the end of the hall, pale and damp with either sweat, seawater, or both, heaving breath as though surfacing from suffocation. 

“How long have you been here?” Crowley demands, stalking over to Aziraphale and immediately propping him up on one shoulder. Aziraphale leans into him in lieu of the hull, making Crowley stumble just a little. 

“Just shy of an hour,” Aziraphale pants. 

“What the fuck is going on, and why  _ now?” _ Crowley hisses. 

“I don’t know, Crowley, you always talk to me as though I have the answers!” Aziraphale snaps. “And while I have a certain clarity of what Is To Be and I’m  _ frighteningly _ clever, I have never once claimed to know everything!”

Crowley raises his eyebrows. “You haven’t shouted at me like that since the Byzantines.”

“You kept harping on the difference between Hercules and Heraclius, I  _ hardly think—” _

The ship shudders beneath them, pitching them backwards, and Aziraphale makes a pained sound when his shoulder digs into Crowley’s ribs. “Sorry,” Crowley grunts. 

“No worries.” Aziraphale grits his teeth and stands, pulling away from Crowley’s touch. He looks a bit green. 

“You look a bit green there—”

“I hate. Seafaring,” Aziraphale says darkly. Crowley judiciously decides not to press, somehow viscerally afraid of the storminess he sees behind Aziraphale’s pupils. He peers around this thin walkway instead, as though looking for a magic door to whisk them off. 

“I suppose we should find a way out of here.”

“The only way out is up to the main deck, where men are currently being slaughtered in droves.”

“Huh. Right out, then.”

Aziraphale’s glare is gutting. “Quite.”

“Well…” Crowley waffles a bit, lost and largely baseless with regards to Aziraphale being angry at or around him. “Have you got any ideas?” 

“What are we going to do—!” Aziraphale moans, burying one hand in his hair and tugging nervously at a white-blonde curl. Crowley looks at him, aghast.

“You’re the one who told me not to ask you that anymore!”

Aziraphale huffs a sigh suspiciously close to a snarl for an angel. “Oh, you impossible  _ bastard,  _ I only just came off of saying—”

“Well excuse me, you very clearly just asked me—”

“IT’S A RHETORICAL QUESTION!” Aziraphale roars, “IT DOESN’T BEGET AN ANSWER! IT IS A CONVERSATIONAL DEVICE I AM CURRENTLY EMPLOYING TO KEEP FROM FALLING APART IN A POOL OF HOLY ANXIETY, YOU FUCKING NUMPTY!”

Crowley stares as Aziraphale heaves for breath, color high in his cheeks. He blinks. “You just said fuck.”

“Yes, I believe I did,” Aziraphale says, his voice withered.

“That means we’re really fucked,” Crowley says plainly. 

“Yes, I believe we are. Please do something, Crowley.”

“What, miracle us away?”

Aziraphale shuts his eyes briefly, visibly summoning patience. “Don’t make me say it plain, please.”

“But how do I know if—”

“DO SOMETHING!”

“Right.”

Crowley snaps his fingers while thinking distantly of land, not-wet, and the shapeless comfort of safety away from warring factions and the threat of a splitting hull. The rushing slipstream of Crowley’s own brand of miracles, a sort of sucking rip like the present trying to yank one back into obeying the laws of physics with very sweaty palms, screams by for a moment before Crowley feels himself deposited solidly on very sandy footing. 

He’s wrapped an arm about Aziraphale’s shoulders, holding him fast with Aziraphale’s back pressed against his chest, and Crowley feels a liver-deep need to hold him like that for a moment just a tick past propriety before putting aside the thought. Crowley lets go, sits heavily, and blinks in the wine-stain evening sunset unfurling in a glorious wash along the horizon. “Red sky at night,” he says, rough-voiced. 

“Sailor’s delight,” Aziraphale finishes, bedraggled but safe in his own hapless seat beside Crowley. They’re quiet for a moment, catching for fresh air not clogged by smoldering ship wood or the screams of soldiers clashing above the wave crests. 

“Do you think that—”

“If you don’t mind,” Aziraphale cuts him off cleanly, staring out over the water with his elbows graceless on his knees but somehow still so put-together despite the dishevelment (Crowley isn’t jealous at all), “I would like to collect myself in silence for just... _ one _ moment, please, that’s all.”

Crowley nods. “I can do that.”

“Thank you.” Aziraphale sniffs deeply, clearing his nose, and sighs low and long to himself. “Almighty above, I  _ hate seafaring.” _

—

**1381  
** _ Oxford, England. Just outside the university, nearing midnight. _

Crowley looks up to see the seat across from him filled. The tavern is packed to its corners but Crowley sits comfortably at his own table just beyond the edges of everyone else’s perception, his favorite place to unwind after a long day, and so he’s ready to weather a lecture from one of his fellow demons when he stops in pleased surprise to see Aziraphale taking up the space instead, wearing a professor’s garb in stark difference to Crowley’s minor merchant getup. Crowley gestures with his cup. “Ale?”

“No, thank you.” Aziraphale’s answering smile is pleasant, too pleasant, and Crowley can see the worry at its corners. 

“Everything alright then?”

Aziraphale clearly hems and haws for a moment with himself before sighing tightly and leaning in on one elbow. “Did you hear of John Wycliffe, at the university just this morning?”

“Yeah, the one who got sacked for calling the pope a fraud?”

Shifting awkwardly in his seat, Aziraphale twists his mouth in a sort of  _ Well I Guess So _ half-smile. “In not so many words, yes. He’s—he isn’t one of yours, is he?”

There’s a spark of hope that flashes behind Aziraphale’s eyes for just a second, which Crowley catches immediately. His heart pulls a little bit as he sips from his cup and lets out a slow breath. “He isn’t, no.”

Aziraphale’s face, despite his clear effort to keep is blank, falls. “Oh.” He fiddles his fingertips together unconsciously on the tabletop, and Crowley buries the urge to cover them with his own. “I was so hoping he was a plant,” Aziraphale says haltingly. Crowley raises an eyebrow. 

“A holy agent of Heaven, hoping for a plant from Hell in the  _ theology department?” _

“I know it’s silly,” Aziraphale says quickly, looking offended, “I just—I don’t know. Humanity these days is behaving so far from the way they normally do, and I fear it’s only going to get worse.” He looks immediately down at the table after shutting his mouth, and Crowley lets the air settle a bit before leaning forward on his own elbow. 

“Worse how? Worse for you lot, worse for my side, worse for everyone up here?”

Aziraphale looks up at him with conviction that wavers on a bit. “Look, I understand how ridiculous this sounds, but I’m afraid for them, Crowley. They don’t know what kind of... _ forces _ they’re dealing with here, when it comes to their churches and their leaders and all that mess. They drive in wedges where wedges shouldn’t be wedged, and I think something awful is bound to happen someday if they don’t quit it.”

The reaching strands of sympathy catch Crowley just behind his lower spine and tug. “Speaking as one of the general mouthpieces of ‘awful,’ I’m inclined to agree with you,” Crowley says in a low voice. He drinks, slowly, holding Aziraphale’s unsettled eyes all through the motion. “However, I don’t think any results from said wedges will benefit either side at all.”

“How do you mean?” Aziraphale looks both confused and slightly offended in one go, an expression only he can truly pull off. Crowley shrugs.

“If humanity run themselves ragged and pull each other apart, then what’s left at the end of the day?” He ticks up three fingers. “Heaven. Hell. Inevitable war. We all still have to go at each other’s throats someday, don’t we?”

“According to prophecy, yes,” Aziraphale assents softly. “That doesn’t mean it’s ineffable.”

Crowley gestures to the tavern and their separate clothes. “Look around, Aziraphale, there’s impermanence everywhere. Throughout each past century, what have the two constants been?”

Aziraphale’s jaw flexes slightly. “Heaven and hell.” Crowley gestures for him to keep going, and Aziraphale furrows his eyebrows. “Day and night?”

“Us,” Crowley blurts, pointing quickly between the two of them. “Crowley and Aziraphale, from creation until whenever it all goes tits up.”

Aziraphale swallows. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Crowley, I—”

“I’m asking you to quit worrying so much about what the humans do, Aziraphale. It’s a waste of energy. They’re flawed, we aren’t—well,  _ you _ aren’t, apparently. But we can only try and understand them so far as we can watch them, because we aren’t them.” Crowley drinks again when Aziraphale remains silent and only looks down at his hands still knit together on the tabletop. “Does that make sense?”

“Very much so,” Aziraphale murmurs. He seems to cut himself off before pausing a moment and reconsidering. “It makes me sad, to think about it that way.”

Crowley’s stomach twists. “Sorry, angel.”

A light patch of color blooms on the tips of Aziraphale’s ears, and Crowley has a silent and atom-quick war inside him to either never call Aziraphale “angel” ever again or call him nothing  _ but  _ “angel” from here on out. He can’t really tell which side wins. 

“It’s alright,” Aziraphale says in a way that means it really isn’t alright at all and he’s still very sad. The concept of Aziraphale being anything less than perfectly content gnaws sharply at Crowley’s nerves. 

“You know what sad people do in this day and age,” Crowley says, conspiratorial, gesturing with his cup; “Drink.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t. I’m auditing a lecture on bookbinding early tomorrow morning.”

Crowley gives him a look. “Just one?”

Aziraphale leans back in his chair, heaves and a sigh, and levels a look at Crowley that betrays just a flicker of true and thankful unburdening. “Alright. Just the one.”

—

**_1401  
_ ** _ Florence, Italy. Guildhouse of the Arti di Calimala, just after judging has closed. _

In all his years slipping his way into judging panels, either to simply observe or sweeten the pot in Hell’s favor once or twice (or three times, alright, quit looking at him like that), Crowley has only twice seen a unanimous vote. Only one of those has been a unanimous vote he’s particularly agreed with, but this makes three.

This Ghiberti chap really is a genius. Crowley wonders, as he stands beside Aziraphale as the last two lingering behind unnoticed in the guildhouse, which side is running the show on the artist for skill this good.

Crowley peers at the great bronze monoliths and squints at the first panel. The past prods at his memory as he looks over the renderings of Adam and Eve, just a  _ little  _ too Europeanized, and lands on the serpent coiled up around a tree on the left of the panel. The smells and the warmth and the crackling potential of the Garden light for a moment up beneath Crowley’s skin before he squints and takes one step closer.

He snorts.

“Got my nose wrong.”

Aziraphale says something under his breath before giving a tight sigh. “Yes, well, I would like to see  _ you _ create something as staggeringly beautiful as this, noses aside.”

Crowley holds in a smirk and steps back, leveling himself with Aziraphale, and continues nodding at the story of creation pressed and molded into the plaster casts in front of them. They really are beautiful, and surprisingly the artist has hit almost every biblical moment right on the nose. Besides, of course, Crowley’s.

“Is he one of yours?” Crowley juts his chin at the art as he looks sideways at Aziraphale, eyebrow raised, and pulls his face into surprise when Aziraphale shakes his head  _ No _ without taking his eyes off the art. Crowley blinks. “Well he’s not one of ours, he gave the Queen of Sheba too many clothes to be one of ours.”

“He’s just a human,” Aziraphale murmurs, still staring at the panels as though burning them into his mind overtop of the memories he must also have of each scene carved into them. Crowley takes a moment to roll the thought around in his head.

“They’re quite brilliant when they really give a shit, aren’t they? Humans?” He watches Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye, watches the way the dusty midmorning light catches all the angles of his face from here, and wonders briefly why he’s never really given himself leave to really  _ look _ at the angel before now. Hasn’t he? Badness knows they’ve had plenty of maddening exchanges over history itself for the past five-and-a-half-thousand years, but Crowley doesn’t think he’s ever taken the time to study Aziraphale before now. He’s lovely.

Well. This is new.

Lost in very sudden and confusing thought, Crowley doesn’t hear Aziraphale the first time and a little belatedly he turns to face him fully. “Sorry?”

“I said yes, they are, aren’t they?” Aziraphale pauses and fiddles a bit with the ties at the neck of his doublet. “We could stand to learn a little something from a few of them, I think.”

“What, humans?”

“Yes.”

“Like what, how to spread plague and bungle a religion, and—and kill each other over nothing?” Crowley’s throat grips more than a bit, the entire last century bubbling under his skin like an itch. They’re supposed to be talking about the state of their recent arrangement, how it’s been working to just leave one another alone these days, but Crowley can’t hold in the swell of minor turmoil fighting its way to the surface. “That’s first day stuff in Hell, Aziraphale, I already  _ know  _ it. The worst part right now is that I don’t really see the point of much of that after the horrorshow behind us, do you?”

Azirphale turns to face him quickly, his face a portrait of surprise. Crowley swallows.  _ Shit, _ he just said all of that out loud. Those are  _ his _ thoughts,  _ his _ private things to handle alone, and now they’re out in the open with an angel very eager to fix things that he thinks are broken.  _ Fuck. _

“Look, I don’t want—”

“I doubt too, Crowley.”

Crowley pauses. Aziraphale looks at him with pointed commiseration, not an expression Crowley is used to seeing on that face, and realizes that the little quiver in his guts feels suspiciously like comfort. Strike the last bit;  _ this _ is new. “Do you now?”

“That—it’s the entire basis of the thing, you know.” Aziraphale turns back to the plaster panels and gestures broadly at them. “History is fine, it’s there, it happened; legends come up through the chaff, good. But over time things twist, Crowley. Little things I witnessed, things I  _ know _ I saw, become something different over time. I have doubt about the Garden. I have doubt about the Ark. I have doubt about the—the Crusades, and Henry I, and Fibonacci, and so many little things, Crowley, but that’s what time  _ does. _ You can’t blame yourself for that, you only have to hold onto your conviction and remember all the truths until...well, they don’t really matter after long enough.”

Crowley flexes his jaw. That isn’t really what he meant at all, but the open wonder of self-discovery in Aziraphale’s eyes is far too endearing to refute. And anyways, it helps to hear an angel talking about making mistakes. They so rarely admit to anything besides perfection. “Thanks,” he hums, “that’s helpful.”

“Is it?” Aziraphale grins brightly at Crowley, and Crowley’s lungs do a swooping flip behind his ribs.  _ Heaven and a half, _ human bodies do the strangest things. How can Crowley be discovering new quirks in a body he’s had for a couple thousand years? Aziraphale bites his lips together as he seems to remember himself and nods tidily. “Yes, I’m glad you think so.”

Crowley heaves a theatrical sigh in order to hopefully cover up the vague and frantic hammering of this stupid heart of his. “So, what, this guy gets loads of florins to carve these doors all over again in bronze, and they just...sit there? Out in the wind and weather?”

Aziraphale’s mouth twitches and looks as though he’s fighting a smile, in which Crowley takes quiet and glittering pride. “Yes, I believe that is what art does, Crowley. It ‘just sits there.’”

“Bit of a silly thing, isn’t it? Art?”

“Regardless of your opinions, I think we can expect to see a lot more of it coming in this next century,” Aziraphale says with airy certainty, tugging with neat efficiency at the cuffs of his sleeves.

_ “Good.” _ Crowley’s voice is heavy, anvil-black for a moment, with the emphatic dislike of the very recent past. “I’d rather art than more of whatever the 13-bloody-00s just were. I really hated all that, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I thought I was the only one,” Aziraphale bursts out, relief like a billowing sail, his shoulders sagging before he stiffens as he turns again to face Crowley. “It—but it was  _ misery, _ I thought you were  _ enjoying _ yourself!”

Crowley has to laugh at that, broad and echoing more than a little in the high ceilings of the guildhouse. Outside on the busy afternoon streets of Florence, life pulses like the confounding rhythm of Crowley’s heart as he watches Aziraphale’s face shift through disbelief, embarrassment, offense, and acceptance within the span of a handful of seconds. Crowley decides to uphold his side of things and make things just a little difficult for Aziraphale, calculating perfectly the exact amount of irreverence necessary to throw his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders and swing them both around to the door that leads to his favorite taberna—Aziraphale’s cheeks pink ever so slightly, and Crowley immediately decides that the 15th century is going to be loads better already.

“I think you missed the part where I very emphatically stated the entire era was shit.” He stops just before the door, releasing Aziraphale with a shrieking resistance in his bones that he does  _ not  _ hear, thank you very much, and smirks. “And no, I don’t tend to enjoy things that are shit. I have  _ far _ better taste than that.”

Aziraphale slides the flats of his palms down the front of his doublet, smoothing invisible wrinkles, and nods. “Noted. Now. I believe we both deserve a drink for helping sway that judging panel?”

“After you, angel.” Crowley pushes the door open, gestures out into the bright Florentine sun with a gentleman’s flourish, and steps sprightly into the 1400s with a spring in his step that wasn’t there a hundred years ago.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to find me on [tumblr](https://chromat1cs.tumblr.com/) and [dreamwidth](https://chromat1cs.dreamwidth.org/) if you'd like to say hi, thanks again for reading ^^


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